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print versionThe Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN)
APRN Statement on the 2013 Annual Governor’s Meeting of the Asian Development Bank | 3 May 2013
Noting the ADB’s theme for this year’s meeting “Development through Empowerment†, APRN General Secretary Marjorie Pamintuan said “Asia’s Destructive Bank is responsible for decades of debt, destruction and disempowerment in the region, and should therefore ditch its promotion of the distorted economic model that has perpetuated poverty, pollution and displacement.†As the Asian Development Bank’s 46th Annual Governors’ meeting unfolds today in Noida, India, the Asia Pacific Research Network challenged the ADB to abandon its anti-people and market-centric development framework that has led to massive disempowerment and impoverishment of the people.
Empowerment and the New Factory Asia: Old Formula and Empty Promises
The ADB boasts of high economic growth rates that supposedly lifted millions out of poverty. It however, acknowledges that despite economic development in the region, it is still home to two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor and that there has been a steep rise in income inequality and access to basic services.
What the ADB failed to mention is that the economic growth that it boasts of, is in fact, fuelled by the environmental destruction caused by large scale natural resource extraction and energy projects that the Bank funded and also the exploitation of hundreds of thousands of workers that provided abundant cheap labour for the manufacturing industries that set their factories in the export processing zones (EPZs) in Asia. Policies pushed by the ADB such as labour flexibilization were implemented to keep wages low and maintain a docile labour force.
Despite the robust economy in the Asia Pacific, further economic expansion is threatened by the projected weakening growth rates across the region and the lingering crisis in the West. To keep economies strong and make growth sustainable and inclusive, the ADB says the region must transform beyond “Factory Asia.†This includes moving low-value manufacturing up the value chain and shifting towards services and knowledge-based economies.
What is in store for the people in the ADB’s New Factory Asia and empowerment strategy is more disempowerment for the people. While the ADB says it wants to improve the access of vulnerable groups to health, education and other services, it does not recognize that the old formulas such as liberalization of trade and investments, and privatization of social services, public utilities, and natural resources are in fact among the perpetrators of chronic poverty and inequality. Rather, the ADB wants to provide a healthy environment, not for the people, but for foreign monopolies to invest and earn super profits by further dominating the economies of developing countries.
The ADB cannot and will not promote genuine development as long it sticks to the same discredited development framework that puts big foreign capitalist interests and private sector profits first over the welfare of the people. This is well reflected in the ADB’s Strategy 2020 which puts private sector development and participation and the advancement of public-private partnerships at the heart of its operational goals in its core operation areas: infrastructure development, environment including climate change, regional cooperation and integration, financing sector development, and education.
The network reiterates the growing call to end anti-people policies including but not limited to the privatization of social services and public utilities, the absolute and unconditional cancellation of illegitimate debts, compensation and public apology for the victims of ADB’s policies and funded projects, the rehabilitation of environments, economies, and livelihoods of the peoples that were destroyed, and the respect of the political, economic, social, and cultural rights of the people.
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Reference:
Marjorie Pamintuan, APRN General Secretary
secretariat@aprnet.org
